FFFF supports causes that promote intelligent, responsible and accountable government in Fullerton and Orange County
Author: Mr. Peabody
Mr. Peabody is a Child of Aquarius, a former hard drug user, and a devotee of lawn bowling. He abandoned a profitable career as an curb address number painter to fulfill a lifetime dream of mastering the zither.
For months FPD spokeshole Andrew Goodrich has been telling the public that Kelly Thomas fought with the police, that there was an “altercation.” That was the Big Lie of course, but the lazy cowards who still work for the OC Register were only too happy to pass that along in their cavalier description of what we knew happened all along: a cold blooded murder. At first they characterized it as a scuffle and a tussle. Then they decided that “fight” was just about right.
Here’s a vide that captures some of the chilling truth about what happened. But not all of the truth, because that is still being withheld from us, and that is why the public should see the video for themselves, with no more self-serving interpretations from the cops.
Former Fullerton Police Chief, and now city council recall target Pat McKinley hired Jay Cicinelli. Cicinelli was arraigned yesterday in Suprior Court in the homicide death of Kelly Thomas at the hands of six McKinley proteges.
But among all the pickpockets, thieves, sexual predators, kidnappers, thugs, and murderers hired by McKinley, Jay Cicinelli was special. The recipient of several gunshot wounds including the head shot that cost him an eye and probably useful brain matter, Cicinelli was placed on a permanent disability pension by LAPD who wisely concluded that Cicinelli was no longer fit to be a policeman.
Enter Mike Hillman, an LAPD honcho and old pal of then Fullerton Chief McKinley; Hillman was determined that Cicinelli fulfill his life’s calling as a cop, and public safety be damned. In McKinley, Hillman found his man, and Cicinelliwas put to work with a badge and a gun on the streets of Fullerton. Need some corrobrating testamony? Here’s the money quote from article linked above from none other than Jay Cicinelli:
I think he had a lot to do with getting me this job, I know he was good friends with (Fullerton Police) Chief Pat McKinley. How many departments are going to hire an officer with one eye?
Let’s put this in perspective: doing a favor for an old LAPD crony, McKinley placed the citizens of Fullerton at pysical and financial risk by employing and deploying a cop rejected by LAPD. It was done knowingly, cavalierly, and utterly irresponsibly. Apart from recognizing the alarming potential for post traumatic stress disorder, even the average civilian will have wondered at the obvious depth-perception and peripheral vision issues connected to a one-eyed cop.
Still waiting for his "Authorities" to tell him what to do...
And now that it’s time to take accountability for his actions, his out-of-town handlers won’t let McKinley do at least one honorable thing in his life: resign.
Earlier we discovered a federal civil trial against the Fullerton PD and one of its cops named Albert Rincon, alleging that he serially sexually assaulted women in the backseat of his squad car. Since then, several interesting pieces of evidence have come forth.
That evidence shows how the FPD’s internal affairs department worked in tandem with a DA’s office that won’t prosecute cops, in order to derail an internal investigation against one of their own.
Follow along as we recite the successful formula:
1. Receive graphically detailed allegations that one of your officers had sexually assaulted a femalein the back of his squad car.
7. Let the Internal Affairs department use the DA’s decline to prosecute as a pretext to conclude it’s own investigation.
8. Set the accused sexual predator free! With a badge and a gun, of course. But for some reason he now has to wear a lapel camera on his shirt at all times.
I hired all of 'em!
Of course Pat McKinley’s long reign of error has now caught up with him, and the taxpayers of Fullerton, too. And the DA? Well, nothing there we didn’t already know.
Here is an interview with a young man who was at the Transportation Center the night of July 5th, 2011. He was waiting for a bus.
His story has the ring of truth to it, and is interesting because it suggests several interesting facts. First, according to this account an “Hispanic” officer had Kelly seated on a curb and had his baton in his hands during some kind of discussion that lasted several minutes, at least; at which point Kelly got up and ran. He was quickly caught from behind, punched repeatedly and spent the rest of his “altercation” with FPD face down. There was no death-struggle between a superhuman drug-crazed freak and six officers grimly fighting for their lives.
There’s is no doubt from this account that the first two cops had difficulty subduing Thomas – most likely because they couldn’t get both hands cuffed behind his back. As the witness suggests, this could have been because the first officer was on top of Kelly from behind and Kelly’s arm was pinned beneath him. After that it was just a gang mugging.
See that guy over there? He doesn't have a bomb. But he might someday!
Here’s a comical OC Register post from today. I say comical somewhat tongue-in-cheek because almost all Register posts and articles are comical these days.
According to this one, the intrepid journalist Doug Irvine tried to squeeze some information out of the DA – such as the names of the cops who beat on Kelly Thomas’s head like a kettle drum with their taser handles.
Two officers were treated for broken bones. I mean there was a bomb. I mean....aw Hell let's just go get donuts...
The response from our Do-nothing DA? Oooooh! We have so many scary threats these days that we just can’t say anything. Well, there was one, at least!
Of course over at the the beleaguered FPD, spokesbozo Andrew Goodrich supplied his comrades at The Register with a scary bomb threat story (nothing was found, of course). Poor babies.
Jeezus, you wouldn’t think such heavily-armed and highly trained experts would be so easily intimidated, now would you? Apparently they are weak as kittens when the chips are down, even with their McKinley vests, and this justifies the ongoing secrecy. The logic is inescapable, right?
The funny thing is to observe how the Register writer, rather than take the useless DA and FPD to task for their obvious lack of transparency, turns his article into a weepy sob story about the poor, defenseless cops. And of course the fact of the DA spending more time on threats to his office because of his lackluster investigation than on the investigation itself just drips with irony. Could that irony really be lost on Mr. Irving. It would appear so.
Here’s the money quote that references our humble blog:
The District Attorney’s Office also cited as a threat an entry on the Friends for Fullerton’s Future blog, which has dug into the Kelly Thomas case: “Someone should make these officers contact information and addresses public.”
Blogger Travis Kiger said that wasn’t a threat, and said he hasn’t seen any specific threats on the Friends for Fullerton’s Future blog. He challenged the District Attorney Office’s decision to keep the names secret.
“They release the names of suspected criminals every single day,” he said. “I don’t understand in this case how it would be any different.”
The District Attorney’s Office is “looking into” the one alleged threat that it received, Chief of Staff Susan Kang Schroeder said. Fullerton Police are “taking the threats seriously” but have no active criminal investigations into them, Goodrich said.
“They’ve all been anonymous in nature,” he said. “They would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to track.”
You’ve got to be kidding. Just goes to show you the extent to which the “law enforcement” establishment will go to protect its safety (or pretend to) while blowing off our safety – from them! And when the cops release information about suspects do they give a rat’s ass about their safety? Of course they don’t.
So did the FPD really receive a bomb threat? Who knows? But it’s gotten impossible to believe a single solitary thing that emanates from Andrew Goodrich’s mouth.
Hmm, we’ve already seen how eagerly council members can run to the trough under the pretense of acting in the interest of our beloved city — remember how Bankhead and Keller each racked up hotel bills at $400 per night on the city’s dime just to stay in the remote city of Long Beach?
$1200?? I didn't even open the mini-bar!
Well, now it’s about to happen again, only it’ll no doubt cost us more money this time around. Renown pit-bull reporter Lou Ponsi posted this in the O.C. Register the other day:
“The City Council last week named Mayor F. Richard Jones as a voting delegate and Councilman Don Bankhead as an alternate to represent Fullerton at the League of California Cities annual conference Sept. 21-23 in San Francisco.”
We're here on important business!
Since F. Dick has been doing such a bang-up job of representing Fullerton lately, I guess we should be grateful he’s willing to go all the way to San Francisco on our behalf. And let’s not forget that Bankhead has his back in case Hee-Haw can’t make it.
Ahh, San Francisco... One of our favorite road trips!
Well, if ol’ Doc sidles up to the hitchin’ post in S.F he may well have an awful lot of explaining to do, because at least in Fullerton, the summer of love it ain’t!
Giddyup! Now open up that Golden Gate, I'm a-comin!
The public meeting starts at 6:30 PM. On the agenda tonight are the issue of hiring contractor Michael Gennaco to “investigate” the FPD. Those of us who have been around City hall awhile know that these contractors always do what the City Manager wants since he’s the guy that got them hired. VOTE NO!
Speaking of the City Manager, Joe Felz, who has overseen the corrupt FPD and who has totally bungled the Kelly Thomas affair is up for a $35,000 raise. Yep, you heard that right. That was bad timing! It’s on what’s called the “Consent Calendar” so unless a member of the public asks the City Clerk to pull this item for discussion it will go through on the nod. VOTE NO!
Also agenized are some more ridiculous “affordable housing” projects of the kind that cost twice as much to build as regular housing. These are being pimped by lobbyists who also happen to be some of the biggest repuglicans in Orange County who are counting on Jones, Bankhead and McKinley to line their pockets. VOTE NO!
Of course you can also make your voices heard in public comments, too, at the start of the meeting.
Fullerton City Hall is located at 303 W. Commonwealth, Fullerton at the intersection of Highland Avenue.
We all know there’s laws for us and there’s laws for cops. The sort of stuff Fullerton Police Department members have been busted doing lately, or accused of in court proceedings would land you or me in jail. For a long time. It’s hilarious to listen to the FPD apologists bemoan the “lynch-type mob” of protesters that want answers before the official cover-up, er, investigation is over, thus denying our fine officers “due process.”
The latest example of the double standard that exists is the revelation that the Kelly Thomas killers were permitted to view (and review, and review again, one surmises) the taxpayer-owned video that shows the killing. This is just fine and dandy according to interim Chief Kevin Hamilton because it helps our boys in blue refresh their memory as they cook up and orchestrate plausible accounts of what they did. But it is not okay for for the public to see the video because it might color the recollections of eye-witnesses!
The same crapola is going on with the request to hire one Michael Gennaco to come into Fullerton and have a look around. Forget the fact that this is going to end up costing the taxpayers the better part of $100K. The real issue is why the City is embarking in this direction when the so-called investigations by the FPD, the DA, and the FBI are ongoing!
We are not permitted to seek answers while these alleged investigations are ongoing, and yet the Three Blind Mice (hopefully Whitaker and Quirk-Silva are smart enough to vote no) are willing to instigate yet another “investigation” at the same time.
It seems very clear to me that the Gennaco hiring, and the attempt to make it appear as both an emergency and some sort of reform action is nothing but a PR gimmick to make the City look like it is finally doing something proactive in the wake of the Kelly Thomas homicide. Of course it’s nothing but a cheap trick to try to stem the tide of public relations disasters that have befallen Fullerton since the image of Kelly’s battered face and crushed neck went globally viral.
Since he was promoted on an interim basis last year I have believed that former museum director Joe Felz was in way over his head. His role in handling the Kelly Thomas homicide has been fuzzy, at best. He seems to have been prepared to let his underling, Chief Sellers make the decisions (or choose not to make any decisions at all) and let police union boss Andrew Goodrich be the official voice of Fullerton – passing half-truths, irrelevancies, or outright lies.
My guess is that Felz abdicated the authority given him by the City Council and handed it over to Pat McKinley.
The only thing I’ve heard from Felz was a lame-ass attempt to play word games by saying no settlement offer was made to Ron Thomas, father of the victim. Of course that was such a sniveling lie that it alone should have earned Felz a half-hour stay in Jay Cicinelli’s basement Taser room.
Here’s an observation made by one of our commenters “Do you know”:
One person the citizen’s of Fullerton are letting fall under the radar is City Manager Joe Felz. The mayor and city council of Fullerton are largely part-time figure heads. The real power in the day to day operations of any small city is in the hands of its city manager. The city manager is also the boss of the chief of police. The chief of police does not even have the power to terminate an employee. The chief can suspend, or place officer’s on administrative leave, but they can only recommend termination. The city manager is the only one with the power to permanently remove an officer from their employment.
Chief Sellers initial inaction in this case is every bit the fault of Fullerton City Manager Joe Felz, as there is no way he did not know what is going on. Chief’s of police throughout California are on the phone with their city manager’s several times a day over one issue or another. City manager’s get their daily marching orders from regional heads of the California League of Cities. Since Chief Sellers did not take action in the early stages of this case, City Manager Joe Felz is every bit as culpable as Chief Sellers. Possibly more.
I’m inclined to agree. We are always told what a nice guy Joe Felz is. Maybe so. But it looks like he’s turned over the keys of the City of Fullerton to a rogue police department.
The City Manager has called an emergency meeting of the City Council this morning at 9:00, a mighty odd time to hold a public hearing. The ostensible purpose of this emergency is to hire an outsider to evaluate the condition our FPD condition is in.
It’s pretty obvious that this decision could have waited until the next scheduled meeting. So what’s the emergency? Maybe City Manager Joe Felz and the Gang of Three are trying to look like they are finally, really and truly taking things seriously. And maybe they prefer dealing with Kelly Thomas related humiliations at nine o’clock in the morning to avoid hundreds of angry commenters.
Fail to the Chief...
The really pathetic aspect of the abject failure of leadership in Fullerton and this desperate and transparent effort to defuse a recall is that the real emergency existed on July 5, 2011 and was completely unknown to our oblivious City Council, including the supposed law enforce experts Pat McKinley and Don Bankhead. Or maybe they knew and just didn’t care. After all, McKinley was police chief from 1993-2009 and has admitted he hired all the cops who have made Fullerton famous lately; and Bankhead has been on the city council since 1888. Oops. I mean 1988.
Has it really been that long?
F. Dick Jones has been on the council for 15 years; will he not take responsibility for the state of affairs he created?
Hail no!
What about the ever-compassionate Sharon Quirk? She has been on the council for seven long years. How many police-related monetary settlements has she approved?
Knitting socks as fast as she can...
Well, there you have it. An emergency. But its an emergency created by world-wide attention to the Fullerton Police Department’s culture of corruption, not by the corruption itself.
Well, go ahead and have your emergency meeting, folks. You can run but you can’t hide.
